The present invention generally relates to the art of salon shampooing and other beauty treatment procedures. More particularly, it relates to a new and improved disposable stay dry collar which is specially designed to prevent undesirable wetting of a customers garments during and after shampooing or other beauty treatment operations.
Nowadays, almost all styling and beauty care operations begin with a thorough shampooing. When hair is washed in a beauty salon, the customer sits in a chair which reclines rearwardly toward a shampooing sink. The sink is provided with a front dugout section to receive the customer's neck so that the head and hair extend into the sink basin. A spray nozzle connected to a flexible hose is manipulated by the operator to wet and rinse the customer during shampooing. In order to thoroughly rinse the customer's hair, the operator frequently extends the nozzle into the sink and directs the flow of water against the back of the customer's head and neck area to thoroughly rinse shampoo or other chemical treatments from the customer's head.
Various devices have been used to cover the customer in an attempt to prevent water from splashing or dripping onto the customer's clothes or the chair. Frequently, a towel is tucked into the customer's collar. However, cotton towels are wetted during the shampooing and rinsing operations. The cotton towel material may actually wick and transmit water from the sprayer nozzle and customer's hair toward the customer's clothing thereby wetting the customers garments. Another shortcoming of using a towel as a wetness barrier is that a number of towels must be used which must be properly laundered. This leads to an extra expenditure of time, energy and money, which is undesirable.
Another method which has been used to cover a customer in an attempt to prevent water from splashing or dripping from the hair onto the customer, the customer's clothes and/or the shampooing chair, has been a plastic or vinyl cape or drape which is placed over the customer and secured to the customer's neck prior to shampooing. These vinyl drapes typically have a cotton tape edge binding which touches the neck of the customer's skin in use. To provide for customer comfort, these drapes are relatively loosely secured about the neck area so that they do not provide a water tight seal at the skin of the customer's neck and accordingly, ingress of water or other chemicals is possible. Moreover, the cotton tape along the neck engaging edge of these drapes can also provide a wicking action which actually transmits the water toward the customers clothing disposed under the drapes, which is undesirable.
A new and improved cape having a separate back splash guard panel is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,709,420. The splash guard panel prevents splashing through the open back portion of the cape below the neck line during shampooing. However, this shampoo cape still has a neck portion provided with a cotton binder so that it suffers from the same drawbacks mentioned above.
Generally, vinyl drapes are intended to be used over and over again. Reuse of the drapes raises health concerns with respect to the transmission of disease. Accordingly, these drapes should be used once and laundered between uses, which dramatically increases the cost to the salon owner. The drapes are too expensive to be treated as disposable items.